REBECCA ADLINGTON’s life is a social whirl at the moment – if there was an official opening of a baked bean can she would be there.

Over the past fortnight she has found herself attending a Twilight premiere in London, competing in a Children in Need bun bake in Chorley and mentoring athletes for a return of BBC TV’s Superstars in Bath.

As British Swimming braces itself for the report into its Olympic failure, prepares itself for a funding cut and continues its search for a new head coach to replace Dennis Pursely, its queen is immersing herself in a contrastingly frothy cocktail of celebrity, showbiz and shopping. She is unashamedly enjoying it.

“Us athletes only get the chance to do stuff like this once every four years so I want to embrace it,” she said. “I think I have spent two nights at home in the past two months.

“I did turn ‘I’m a Celebrity’ and Dancing on Ice down. I’m absolutely awful with creepy-crawlies and I couldn’t eat that stuff they do in the jungle and I can’t ice skate. I know they would teach you but my balance is awful and I’d be petrified my fingers would get skated over.

I did turn ‘I’m a Celebrity’ and Dancing on Ice down

Rebecca Adlington

“Strictly is the one I’d love to do. I’d enjoy the dressing up and getting the make-up on but I would be absolutely awful. I dance like my mum. But it just looks like so much fun.”

So is that what the future holds for Britain’s greatest female swimmer – Strictly Come Dancing? Her best friend in the pool, Joanne Jackson, retired this week. Adlington has been considering following suit and ending her competitive career at 23 since the Olympics.

Pushed into third place in her best event, the 800m freestyle, by 15-year-old Katie Ledecky, she considered herself over the hill. But the lure of another British festival of sport is pulling her back towards the water.

She is increasingly tempted to shelve retirement plans and carry on swimming up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Inside the shell of the scatty socialite, the heart of a relentless and ruthless competitor still beats.

“I will decide for definite in the New Year what I want to do. It depends how my body reacts to getting back into the pool,” she said.

“If the Commonwealths weren’t in this country I probably wouldn’t even consider it but the fact that they are... I’ve seen the incredible buzz from the Olympics and I think that is going to continue in Glasgow.

“I’ll never make an Olympic comeback. The older you get the harder it is in our sport but it is quite scary to think about swimming not being there. It has always been swimming for me – I always wanted to be a swimmer – so it is hard even to think about doing something else. I know I will never find something I love as much.” Three weeks ago Adlington gingerly dipped her toe back in the water for the first time in almost three months with a 2.5km swim at her club, Nova Centurion, in Nottingham.

It is the pool in which she has circumnavigated the globe in relentless training lengths over the past decade. She was, she concedes, “so unfit” but she enjoyed the familiar feeling of being in water again.

The last time, apart from a splash in the Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls on a charity bike ride across Zambia, was at the London Aquatics Centre when she emerged tearfully after the 800m final, fearing she had let a nation down.

“Everyone thought I was going to get two gold medals again like in Beijing,” said Adlington, who took two bronzes.

“When everyone is there to watch you do that and then you don’t manage it, you think they have wasted their money. I was sorry I couldn’t have given them that great moment to share.

“Looking back, after only qualifying for the final of the 400m in lane eight I can’t believe I won a medal. I was blown away by that.

“For the 800m it is still mixed emotions. I was so glad I got another medal but my time was off so it was hard for me to be satisfied.”

She blames the early scheduling of the British trials for the six-second slide from Beijing. Swimmers can only stay at their peak for so long and she had slipped off it.

The bronze in her best event was not what she went to London for but the consolation for her was there can have been few medals of any colour cheered more loudly in Olympic history.

As she stood on the podium to receive it the chants of her name rolled around the Aquatics Centre.

“I never expected that reception. I will never, ever forget that moment. I couldn’t believe the support I got,” she said. “It was so heart-warming. It was such a fuzzy moment. I felt special. I didn’t necessarily deserve it but they gave me it. It was indescribable. I couldn’t help but cry.

“In a few years’ time I will put them all in a display case at home and my bronze ones will be in there just as prominently as my gold ones.”

A few years’ time? She may not say it outright, she may not know it for definite herself yet, but the chances are we have not seen the last of Adlington in the pool.